Tagging note: The abbreviations NI2 and NI3, as usual in the National
Puzzlers' League, refer to the (Merriam-Webster) New International
Dictionary, 2nd/3rd edition.

Worth Three Dozen Words

by Kevin Wald

Wow! I just joined Facebook, and I've already got eight completely fictional
friends! To see their names (in alphabetical order), find the extraneous
letter in each Down clue (which must be removed before solving), and read
these letters in clue order.

Or you could just look on their individual walls. That is, certain
Across answers are too long for their spaces, and you therefore must write
one letter in each such answer on the "wall" between the squares
occupied by its neighboring letters. The letters on the walls are
just my friends' names, after a certain transformation.

Anyway, I hope they're not mad that I put up a goofy picture involving
all of them! To see the picture, take each Across answer not used above,
and apply the transformation you found. Then for each letter sequence
that results, go from wall to wall as described to form a
small drawing; all of these together form the complete picture — one
that a lot of people would consider so embarrassing!

ACROSS

1. Again brings in check and coins, except for one
10. Native-born Israeli soprano with a bikini top
12. In the Alps, declaim my meterless poem at length
14. Help a pair of ninnies from the east Asian country
17. Expert on dreams and one (1) candy made with caramel essence [NI2]
18. Rat let Reed cut short crossbar attached to a cart
20. Father and bishop behold a Picasso
24. A mostly-new match
25. Czechs at the middle school love one South American
28. Era after slowpoke, getting endlessly angry, turned people
against discrimination
32. A Tony-winning musical character from Greece has a treble duet?
33. By getting interwoven with 201 spiny plants
34. Antsier cuss drops odd items in very short amounts of time
(abbr.)
35. Integrals mischaracterized geometric figures

DOWN

2. Take in each craftsman's first name (4)
3. AC/DC flipped back to scene penned by Tiny Ghosts's author (5)
4. Doctor claiming you must be a huge adder (4)
5. Stuart in Chicago's "L" with a mobile phone (4)
6. Trolly with the last of the toast (5)
7. More irritable editor that is right about West Enid in general (6)
8. Foremost of atheists put out paper (6)
9. Nate, for example, with beautiful women wearing costume jewelry (4 5)
11. In the morning, I leave a pail in Mexico (5)
13. More than one vagrant sands the earliest musical instruments (5)
15. Initially, one of six people had eaten really aesthetic, somewhat
round unfertilized eggs (9) [NI3]
16. Beastly establishment will halve radical red-masked man with a
sword (5)
19. Head of eland, yes? Yes, for Molière! (5)
21. Charo gives, in part, a Homeric term for "Greek" (6)
22. Beer in a silly hat (6)
23. Returned home to stop leader from throwing a Fiat (5)
24. One whose sign precedes the bully's operatic song and dance,
essentially (5)
26. Cast fed by the French landholder? (5)
27. Supporter of Saul mistakenly embracing error after error (5)
29. Ghastly heat borne by author in Siam (4)
30. Sprint has tone to indicate "disaster" (4)
31. Pleasant loony finally strikes diamonds (4)